Health Check

I hope you are settling in to a week full of delicious pies, abundant sleep, a great book, and time to deepen connection with friends and family. Caroline and I and our boys are in Staten Island and Philly this week visiting with my whole extended family up here, and we're appreciating this time we have together!

As we lean into the winter holidays, I'd like to encourage students, families, and staff to embrace the habits that support your health and well-being now so you come back next week feeling healthy and strong. In particular, please consider the following important efforts:

• Sleep. It's tempting over these breaks to stay up deep into the night and sleep late into the day, but what our bodies really need is a consistent schedule that includes enough sleep every night (8-10 hours for teens). With the early dark nights of winter, this is a great time to embrace a relatively early bedtime and a sleep schedule that works even when school is up and running again.

• Exercise. The school schedule keeps us steady with some regular exercise throughout the week. Keep up a good schedule of physical activity with whatever works for you to feel active and healthy and strong.

• Unplug from Screens; Connect with Nature and the People you Love. Enjoy some good shows and some time on your favorite video games this week. But also consider if you have let your on-screen habits become unhealthy. If you find you are wasting big chunks of time scrolling social media or if video games have become an unhealthy compulsion, use this week to take an honest look at how you are using your time and how those on-screen activities make you feel over time. If things have gotten out of whack, consider how to put some guardrails up around your on-screen time. That could mean committing to a time each night when you will put your phone away (smartphones are hugely disruptive of sleep). Or you might make the switch this year to a flip phone or a Lite Phone that simply eliminates the temptation to scroll. For students who are struggling with anxiety, depression, or body image challenges, this is an especially important intervention to consider - just look at the growing evidence that social media is linked to mental health issues for young people and for young women in particular. When the urge to jump on a screen arises, go for a walk with your dog or do something else that connects you with nature and the friends (including your furry friends) you love.

Okay, that's my health check-in and encouragement. I hope that didn't come off as too preachy. Please know I send these messages because I see the data from our student wellness surveys and work with our families in crisis and believe there is no more important effort for us than to work at being a healthier, stronger, more resilient community. Life is full of violence and loss, grief and sadness and loneliness; that is true today and has always been true. Our expectation should not be that life is not painful, it's that we can become strong enough to handle the pain and suffering we will inevitably experience. A week like this one is an opportunity to check in with ourselves and make the adjustments that will benefit us steadily over time.

In this week of thanksgiving, I am grateful to work alongside thoughtful, hard-working colleagues doing important work that is meaningfully impacting our students and families. I am deeply honored to get to work with Griffin School students, each of whom brings something unique and special to our community. I feel inspired to be around the creativity, music, art, athleticism, ideas, and positive energy that springs from our school community. The partnership between our students and families, our staff and board and friends in the community to make the world a more just, more compassionate, more thoughtful place is wonderful. Thanks to all of you for your engagement and your care and support. Happy Thanksgiving.

Warmly,
Adam

ADAM WILSON (he/him/his)
Co-Founder
Head of School
Griffin School